Aurora – They come and go, watch TV, read newspapers and stand in line.
There’s lots of standing in lines.
Evacuees from Hurricane Katrina queue up at the Lowry campus to process paperwork, receive messages and supplies, and inquire about transportation and possible jobs.
Teri Classick of the Arapahoe/Douglas Mental Health Network said she is awed by the evacuees’ resiliency: “They are sometimes frustrated, but who wouldn’t be?”
Evacuees can leave children at a day-care center on the campus as they look for work or go shopping.
Monday afternoon, evacuees got off an RTD bus that dropped them at the dorm. Many of them were carrying shopping bags stuffed with items. One young man carried a prized small-screen TV to his room.
Edwina Larrieu, 23, has come to rely on the security of her new dorm life since arriving in Denver on Wednesday.
“I’m scared to move into an apartment,” she said. “I don’t know how to get from point A to point B in Denver. It’s strange.”
Larrieu, who was a student at Delgado Community College in New Orleans when Katrina hit, doesn’t know whether she’ll ever return home, although she misses its familiarity.
“Everyone in New Orleans, it’s almost like they are all family,” Larrieu said during an interview in the cafeteria of her dorm on the Lowry campus. “I feel out of place. I feel like an alien.”
Larrieu made it to Denver with her 3-year-old son, Ezra, her mother-in-law, Margie LaMartz, and other family members.
The American Red Cross has processed 465 evacuees at the Lowry campus; more than 1,000 evacuees have registered with the state of Colorado through the official identification process. The Lowry dorms are housing 375.
Since arriving, evacuees have had to leave the dorm and get their meals from a tent kitchen in the parking lot. But volunteers and staff hope to start serving food from the dorm’s kitchen today or Wednesday, said Robert Thompson, an American Red Cross spokesman.
LaMartz’s son Javon Jones, 9, started attending fourth-grade classes Friday at a local public school, but LaMartz is looking forward to returning to New Orleans.
“I want to go back home,” she said. “As soon as they tell us it’s OK, I’m going.”
Karen Holland, a therapist with Community Reach of Adams County, staffed a “stress management” desk at the dorm Monday.
She said: “The decision they face, whether they will go home or stay, that is a big question.”
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson can be reached at 303-820-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
